General News of Tuesday, 28 December 2010

Source: GNA

72-year-old to contest 2012 presidential poll

A 72 year-old retired educationist, Dr Baffour Awuah, has announced his decision to contest the 2012 presidential poll on the ticket of the New Nation Party (NNP).

He told the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi that he has already picked a “Registration Form” from the Electoral Commission (EC) and going through the process to get the party registered.

Dr Awuah said his vision was to make sure that there was equitable and fair distribution of the nation’s resources to benefit all Ghanaians irrespective of geographical location, ethnicity or religious belief.

He said he would bring an end to the socio-economic injustices majority of the people continue to suffer, more than half a century of self-government.

Since independence, successive governments had only succeeded in ensuring that their members alone lived in comfort.

This has led to unacceptably high levels of poverty among most Ghanaians as they are left out in the development agenda.

“Most people don’t have food to eat, place to sleep and access to health facilities and this would be tackled head-on,” he said.

Dr Awuah said the NNP, would undertake massive housing development to provide decent accommodation for the people, when the party was elected into office.

Additionally, the party would work to enhance agriculture by linking the farming communities with good roads to enable farmers transport their produce to marketing centres and rejuvenate Ghana Food Distribution Company to buy the farm produce to improve the incomes of farmers.

On education, Dr Awuah said every community should have a school and that, it was not proper for children to travel long distances to attend school.

He said the NNP would also see to it that health care facilities were built, especially maternity homes, in each town or village.

There would be more dams to provide treated water for the people while working to empower local community members to undertake their own security initiatives to promote peace, law and order.

Dr Awuah said the youth would become the main pillars of the NNP and work with the Unit Committees and assembly members to undertake demand-driven development projects that would directly benefit the people.

Development planning would be influenced by accurate statistics, he said.